


See You Somewhen

by JackieSnax



Series: Gay 30s Time Traveling [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Gay Panic, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Red String of Fate, Socialist Steve, Time Travel, at least for some of the time it follows their entire lives, aww yis, because it's the thirties, undiagnosed mental illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackieSnax/pseuds/JackieSnax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not many people meet their life-partner at the age of 8.  Probably even fewer people meet their life-partner 40 years before he’s even born.  Steve Rogers does both, though.  Time Traveler’s Wife AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See You Somewhen

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mainly MCU story that has some comic story-lines. You don't have to read The Time Traveler's Wife to understand this fic; no characters from it will be present. A few of the themes addressed in The Time Traveler’s Wife will be addressed here.

When:  Who knows?

Where: The Cold Place

Tony: Varying ages, primarily 20

Steve:  - 

During the day, here, the sky is normally a blank, white canvas.  Colorless like it's alive and freezing with me, up there.  Occasionally a blue vein will spark through and the whole thing will split open.  Only once have I been dropped here when the sky is entirely clear, and that time it was as if the earth had been cut in half and was bleeding vicious, dazzling diamond-light back into the heavens.  I'd laid down in the snow and just enjoyed it, squinting, not noticing the fierce sunburn I was getting in below-0 degree weather.  It was better that night.  By then I'd frozen so stiff my body felt malleable, like it was just oil twirling and flowing atop all this ice.  My vision was fuzzier, too, crystalizing all the stars into tiny bursts.  

And _god_ , these stars.  The sky's really the only thing I like about The Cold Place.  Especially the sky at night.  Free of light pollution and stretched vast and lifeless from one horizon to the other for my lonely contemplation, The Cold Place definitely gives me something to look at whilst contracting frost bite.  That much can be said for it.

Maybe that's why I come here so often.

At my father's funeral I ran into an older me - maybe late thirties, or something.  He turned up frosty in the men's bathroom when I went in there to throw up, collapsing down behind me and curling into the fetal position, letting out these shaking, shuddering gasps that sounded like some freak goat and humpback whale hybrid noise.  At first the ice and snow thickening his hair and eyebrows had made him look grayer than he was, and I'd practically had a heart-attack because I'd assumed some disgustingly ironic, subconscious part of old-me had decided here and now was a great time to die.  

But he'd eventually calmed down enough to sit up, and I'd grabbed the tap and turned the water on warm so he could put his hands in and we could try to avoid losing extremities, and then I'd locked the door so no one would freak and kick out the pathetic old freezing man that is to be my future.  

After about a half hour he could move his fingers, and the snow had melted away to reveal only a few grays, sparking at the temples.  I'd given him my clothes to wear, so his were sitting in a damp heap in front of a vent and I was curled up in my boxers against the door, watching him poke at his chapped lips in the mirror.  And I'd finally asked, "Why do we even go there, anyway?" 

He'd kind of wince-grinned, and said, "Spoilers."  

"Don't give me that shit."  I'd shot back, "Come on, just _try_ to tell me."

"I already know I don't tell you now, though.  So, deal with it."

"Well _I_ don't know you don't.  For all I know, you only don't tell me until you do tell me, but you have to say you don't first, because you remember this happening."  I'd pointed out, and he'd laughed, because _we_ are very funny.

Our eyes had caught in the mirror - him desperate and resigned, and me angry and young and anxious about eventually becoming desperate and resigned, with nothing to do to stop it.  There's no choice, with us.  Free will is for other people when you come face to face with your future on a regular basis.

He'd sighed and said, tightly, "Here, kid, I'll give you this: The Cold Place contains the molten center of our fucked up pull."  

I'd stared incredulously at him.  "What?" 

He'd sort of flinched.  Opened and closed his mouth, made a gasping motion like a fish drowning on air - a sign I recognized from when I'm trying to say something I can't, because it'd change something that already happened.  And to him, talking to me is something that's already happened.  Is happening now, to me.  

He'd shrugged after the failed attempt and looked down at his fingers.  Same nonchalance as before, but with a sort of grieving, strained edge.  But every older me looks strained and sad and _old_ , so it doesn't always mean anything.  

Anyway, he'd vanished to another time a few information-less minutes later.

This time I've been here at The Cold Place for maybe three hours.  The longest I've stayed is perhaps a little over a day, and I was just lucky I'd had my backpack and lighter with me, then.  I'd burned all my school books, trying to stay warm.

The first few times, when I was little, I spent a lot of time exploring.  Trying to figure out what new wonder awaited me, here.  My spontaneous, uncontrollable chronological displacements are normally very considerate in that they only deliver me places I have some strong emotional pull towards.  Normally to the _nouns_ I have a strong emotional pull towards.  People like Jarvis, Rhodey, Pepper, Steve.  Places like MIT, the Tower, and Bucky Barnes' shitty apartment.  Things like DUM-E or the arc reactor or this glorious red and gold armor I at some future point create.  

The Cold Place is a barren, silent expanse of ice with a dark, sharp shadow always, always beneath where I land.  It looks like maybe it was a boat or plane, at some point.  Some type of building, maybe even.  Now it's just this black beneath the ice that I lay back on to stare up and wait for my time here to be fulfilled. 

_The molten center of our fucked up pull._

I breathe in through my dripping nose to give my tongue a break from being cold.  It sits, melting against the roof of my mouth.  I curl up onto my side over the shadow and wonder, not for the first time, if maybe I die here.  

Maybe that's me, beneath.

It's possible.


End file.
